Crude futures weaken as EIA weekly data reveal stocks build

29 December 2011 16:42[Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS)--Crude oil futures weakened on Thursday after the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly stock report showing a build in US crude stocks in the week ending 23 December.

At 15:50 GMT, before the report was released, the front-month February ICE Brent contract was trading around $107.14/bbl, down by 42 cents/bbl compared to the settlement on Wednesday.

At the same time, the February NYMEX WTI contract was trading around $99.01/bbl, down by 35 cents compared to its Wednesday settlement.

The stock report was released at 16:00 GMT on Thursday, a day later than usual due to the December holiday season.

By 16:10 GMT, both contracts fell deeper into negative territory. February Brent was trading around $106.89/bbl, 67 cents lower than Wednesday’s settlement price.

The February WTI contract was trading around $98.60/bbl, a loss of 76 cents against the Wednesday settlement.

Analysts’ predictions for this week’s figures were that they would show a draw on crude stocks of about 1.7m bbl, a /draw on distillate of around 500,000 bbl and a draw on gasoline of around 100,000 bbl.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) figures were published late on Wednesday.?xml:namespace>